Permanent Galleries

Still Life Gallery

The Museum has acquired through gifts and purchases an outstanding collection of “Contemporary American Still Life” paintings including work by John Stuart Ingle, Janet Fish, Janet Monafo, David Bierk, Stone Roberts, John Nava, James Aponovich and William Bailey.

STILL LIFE WITH RAJASTAN QUILT, James Aponovich (American, born 1948)
Oil on canvas, 1995
Collection of the Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science
Museum Purchase, The Joseph Derr Trust
1995.38

The still life gallery entitled “The Order of Things" includes both the 1689 oil on canvas Flowers and Fruit by Flemish artist Nicholaes Van Veerendael, an example of the broad, decorative style of late-17th century floral painting, and a 1996 pastel by Kentucky artist Sheldon Tapley entitled Volcano and Mirror. Both carefully constructed still life compositions may be viewed on a variety of levels. Notions of life and plenitude are expressed in lush fruit and blooming flowers, while hints of destruction and decay and comparisons of the exotic and familiar are found in each composition.

Landscape Gallery

The landscape gallery “Romance with Land and Sea” focuses on the fundamental connection between humanity and nature which is at the very core of the land's appeal as an artistic subject. This connection has been shaped by the changing circumstances of civilization. The gallery includes early 19th century paintings by American artists Jasper Cropsey and Norton Bush who equated the country’s unspoiled wilderness with the nation’s seemingly limitless potential; the experiments of the evocative effects of light and atmosphere by the American Impressionist John Ottis Adams; and the 20th century works of Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, and Milton Avery, whose landscapes were depicted through each artist's personal emotional response to their world.

THE CLOSING OF AN AUTUMN DAY, John Ottis Adams, (American 1851-1927)
Oil on canvas, 1901
Collection of the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science
Gift of the Art League
1966.136

MOUNTAINS TO THE NORTH - AUTUMN, LAKE GEORGE, NEW YORK, Georgia O’Keeffe, (American 1887-1986)
Oil on canvas, 1922
Collection of the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science
Gift of Mr. Phil Lowenthal, Evansville, Indiana
1966.300

Portrait Gallery

European and American portraits and figure studies are featured in the gallery “Of Face and Form” Portraits range from formal, commissioned paintings by the Dutch artist Nicolaes Maes and British portraitists George Romney and Sir Thomas Lawrence, which memorialize the rich and powerful, to a pastel sketch by French Impressionist Pierre Renoir of his little son. A recent addition to the gallery is the preparatory study of Arabesque. This egg tempera and ink drawing on paper is exhibited with the fully realized 1941 egg tempera painting on panel by American artist Paul Cadmus (1904-1999).

PORTRAIT OF A CHILD, Pierre Auguste Renoir, French (1841-1919)
Pastel
Collection of the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sol Bronstein
1970.538

Genre Gallery

“A Sense of Place” the gallery devoted to European and American genre views, offers the visitor a comparison between the environments and everyday experiences of a 17th century Dutch village in Winter Scene by Jan Abrahamsz. Beerstraten; the depiction on canvas of Samuel Woodworth’s song The Old Oaken Bucket by American Jerome B. Thompson in which farm children are depicted in a charming view of life before the Civil War; and the colorful life of the dance halls in turn-of-the-century Paris in Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithograph of Jane Avril at the Jardin de Paris, among others.

The Gothic Room

Allegorical paintings and decorative arts are displayed in the English oak linenfold paneled gallery entitled “The Gothic Room”. Featured there are some of the Evansville Museum’s most treasured works including Madonna and Child by 17th century Spanish painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo; a 16th century Flemish stained glass window depicting the four portraits of a bishop, martyr, doctor and scholar; and eight etchings by the Dutch master Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn.

Outdoor Sculpture Garden

FLOWING RIVER, John McNaughton, Evansville, Indiana
Cor-ten Steel, 138” high x 120” wide x 48” deep
Museum Purchase for the United States Bicentennial, 1976
With funds from the Hilb-Gumberts-Hirsheimer Trust of the Evansville Museum Endowment
and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
1976.578

In 2005, after a 35 year teaching career as a Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of Southern Indiana (Evansville, Indiana), John McNaughton retired from teaching. He has exhibited his work internationally and is represented in more than 300 museums, corporate and private collections, including the Smithsonian Institution.FLOWING RIVER is one of eight public sculptures by McNaughton in the Evansville community.

Born in Chicago in 1916, one of seven children, Abbott Pattison attended Yale University, earning both a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He joined the Navy in 1942 and was assigned the command of 125 men on a ship in the Pacific Theater. After the war, Pattison resumed his career as a sculptor, teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, the North Shore Art League, and the Skowhegan School of Art in Maine. He was sculptor in residence at the University of Georgia. Pattison lived in Winnetka, Illinois for thirty-five years before retiring in 1993 and moving to Maine. An accomplished sculptor, Pattison’s work is included in museums, corporate and university collections across the country.

By 1910, the facility was renamed The New Grand Theatre, later simply The Grand Theatre, and was part of the famed Orpheum vaudeville circuit. By 1929 talking movies premiered in Evansville at The Grand Theatre.

Unable to compete with smaller, modern movie houses, The Grand Theatre closed in 1962 and was razed the following year. The Lady of the Grand was saved at the request of Jeanne Suhrheinrich, longtime entertainment editor for The Evansville Courier.

The Centennial Gates are intended to create a portal which simultaneously welcomes visitors and challenges them aesthetically. The eleven bronze medallions on the gate represent the planets and the Sun, as well as Polaris, the star of guidance. The connecting fence complements the gate and carries on the fluidity of the piece. Vertical lines are interrupted by circular structures which embrace abstracted flames. These elements are symbolic references to knowledge and safe harbor and reminded the artist of torches burning along the river’s edge as signs of welcome and civilization.

Bill Leth received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and his Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. With a background in metalsmithing, Leth came to Evansville to join the art faculty of the University of Southern Indiana.